Without My Jane
by Sybil Jane Capulet
Summary: Mr Rochester realises that Jane has left him. Heartbroken, he begins to understand her reasons. Please review! I love getting feedback.


**I wrote this while listening to the musical version of Jane Eyre, composed by Paul Gordon. It is a wonderful adaptation of the book, and anyone who is not familiar with it should check it out. James Barbour as Mr Rochester is quite swoon-inducing. The title of this story is borrowed from a line in the heartbreaking song 'Farewell Good Angel.'**

Without My Jane

At last it is morning. The shining sun gives me new hope, hope that my Jane will listen. She is stubborn, my beloved creature, but she will be open to reason, even such twisted reason as I have to offer. Love will win out, as it must.

I have not slept this night, for my soul is tormented and my brain fevered and agitated. The face I see in the glass is not mine: it is the face of a being unknown, a man unkempt and wild as a beast of the wilderness, a man with the fire of determination and guilt in his eyes. He has nothing to offer but lies.

I look away quickly. It is not me that lies, it is this backwards image of myself that is untruthful. I have nothing but real and deep love in my heart, love that will prompt me to do anything.

Suddenly I am seized by a fever of activity. There is no time to shave, but I must make myself presentable. My precious darling - I am not good enough for her! But I must see her now, while the words I must speak are fresh in my mind; surely she will take me as I am, for she loves me.

Her room is just across the hall: many is the night that I have contemplated crossing that small divide and making her entirely mine. I know she is virtuous, my dear love, and she has resisted me many times, yet I retained the hope that she would give in.

But of course on our wedding night she would not have kept herself from me. I was to be her husband. An exchange of rings would have made us one although all the love in the world could not, and then I could have possessed her. But, sick bastard that I am, I have all but destroyed our hope of happiness. I misunderstood her from the first, took her for an innocent and uncomprehending schoolgirl. But she understands, my fairy-girl: she knows what I have to offer. Perhaps if I had but stated my case plainly from the first, never deceived her, given her to understand that while I could not marry her legally my love was ever to be trusted - perhaps she would be in my arms now, both of us far from this mouldering prison I am forced to call home. Had I but told her the truth - but I hardly know what the truth is anymore. Am I so corrupted by experience that I cannot even tell right from wrong? But perhaps I am not so degenerated: I can still love - surely that counts for something.

Three quick knocks on her door. She is likely sleeping still, but I have no choice but to wake her. I must see her before common sense persuades me otherwise.

'Jane?' I call, but softly so as not to wake the household. They must know of my wrongdoing by now: I do not care. 'Jane? My darling, it is I. Jane, open the door.'

Still she does not answer. Has she entirely hardened her heart against me? She shunned me for hours yesterday; perhaps she has resolved to never speak to me again. She ran from me last night, wished me happiness and then fled... but that cannot have been our last farewell. It cannot have been! My Jane would never leave me so. God would never be so cruel as to -

The door is not locked.

'Jane!'

A small, neat room, dim in the early morning light. The bed is smooth and empty, no sign of my darling anywhere. For a moment I cannot move, cannot think. She must not leave me! Doesn't she know what torment my life will be without her? Does she care nothing for me?

I throw open the wardrobe, desperate for a sign of her presence. Most of her gowns are there, all the pretty, useless things I have bought her. And her wedding dress, a plain white frock, not what I would have chosen. My Jane thinks for herself. She is no longer mine.

Is this how she would leave me? Not a word of farewell, not a parting kiss? Does she fear me? I would never have hindered her escape - at least I think I would not have - but if I could have held her one last time, felt her pure heart beating next to mine, if we could have spoken to each other and understood each other... Am I never to hear her soft voice again?

On a shelf sits a case that I recognise. I open it: a pearl necklace - on of my last presents to her, the only one she seemed to truly like - lies coiled inside. It might never have ringed her smooth throat or been touched by her hands. Suddenly I am filled with irrational hope: she would not have left without even a small token, something by which to remember the great love with shared. Perhaps she is still in the house.

Before I know it I am out in the hall, the pearls still clutched in my hand, pounding on Mrs Fairfax's door.

'Up!' I cry. 'Answer, woman!'

She opens the door and looks out sleepily, a robe clutched over her night-gown.

'What is it, Mr Rochester?' Her tone is cold, and rightly so.

'Where is Jane? Did she speak to you? Where has she gone?'

'Is she gone?'

'Where is she? Damn you!'

'Well, I'm afraid I don't know. And I must say that if she has gone she was right to do so. After what you have done to her... I do not like to speak against you, for I have served you for years and know that you are a good man. But you have treated Miss Eyre reprehensibly, Mr Rochester, most reprehensibly.'

A search of the house and grounds yields nothing. She is long gone, my sweet life, and I know not where she can be found. By afternoon all attempts to find her have been abandoned. I see the way my servants look at me, pitying and contemptuous, sympathetic towards my broken heart but aware that it is entirely my own doing.

I retreat, shivering and broken, to the room where Jane and I last spoke. I consume copious amounts of drink, but even that does not calm me. My desolation is absolute. What reason is there to go on without her? My hope is quenched entirely; I am ruined. She is my one happiness, the one thing that keeps me from my vices and revives me, the only creature I have ever loved. Dear God, where can she be?

'Mr Rochester?'

I have lapsed into a fitful half-doze, and the tap on my arm bring me back to life with a painful jolt. For a moment I think she has come back, that it is her little hand that has touched me.

But it is Adéle, the French bastard who may be mine, the ever-present reminder of my shame.

'Leave me.' I cannot speak to a child now.

'Mr Rochester,' she persists. She is in tears. 'Where is Miss Eyre?'

'Miss Eyre - Miss Eyre is gone.' At this my defences are undone entirely. Tears fall freely down my face, and I do not care that Adéle is present to observe my weakness. 'My love is gone.'

'But I don't want her to go!'

'Adéle, I am sorry.'

As she slips out. I glimpse her from behind, and am acutely reminded of her mother, the yellow-haired enchantress who made my life a misery. Or so I thought at the time. I have not truly known suffering until this moment. What did Jane say to me -? Ah, yes, her words are still fresh in my mind. I will never forget a single moment we shared, for we are to share no more. 'I will not be your English Céline Varens,' she said to me.

And then I understand. She is wise, my Janet, more so than I ever knew. Her virtue and her strength are the very things that make her. I have often called her my second self, for truly she is - was - my better half. Fool that I am, I understood that she was different and yet treated her like all the others, bought her fancy clothes and played games with her heart as though that would truly win her.

But she was astute enough to see through me, to visualise without prejudice the life we would have had together, tainted as we were by my lies. Above all it is her goodness that I love. My dear one: she was right to leave me, right to free herself while she still could. I will continue to search for her, for I must see her happy and well-provided for. But I will never seek her love again, for in giving it to me she would surrender her precious self, and cease to be Jane Eyre.


End file.
